Reviews for Burn Book
by Kara Swisher
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
An essential explanation of how tech has changed the world, from a truth-teller who has witnessed it at close range. Years ago, someone interviewing Swisher for an internship told her she was too confident. Her reply: “I’m not too confident, I’m fantastic. Or I will be.” It could be annoying, but most readers will agree with her. Swisher, who began as a journalist covering the rise of the internet and has since become a thought leader via conferences, publications, podcasts, and an opinion column in the New York Times, offers an account of her career that is fun to read, enlightening, and sometimes frightening. She’s been ahead of her time since the 1990s, when she supported a colleague in lodging a then-unheard-of sexual harassment complaint against talk show host John McLaughlin, and she has a clear talent for “scenario building, which is a fancy way of saying I’m a good guesser.” This is evident in her narration of the rise and fall of companies from AOL to Uber and the careers of “man-boys” like Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and many more. With regard to social media, Swisher writes that “engagement equals enragement,” and she predicted the Jan. 6 insurrection; in fact, she posed it as a hypothetical to see if Twitter would kick Trump off the platform. The tech world, she writes, is a “mirrortocracy, full of people who like their own reflection so much that they only saw value in those that looked the same,” people who “ignored issues of safety not because they were necessarily awful, but because they had never felt unsafe a day in their lives.” Though the book lives up to its title with scathing portraits of jerks and gross excesses, one of the most memorable aspects is Swisher’s deep respect for Steve Jobs, whom she laments as one of a kind. Swisher for president. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Swisher, the bad-ass journalist and OG chronicler of Silicon Valley and its denizens (almost all of them male because, well, tech world), takes no prisoners in this highly readable look at the evolution of the digital world. She's covered all the boldfaced names, many from the early days of their careers: Gates, Thiel, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and Musk, as well as lesser-knowns who have still become billionaires thanks to their start-ups, successful or not. She spills so much tea that several napkins will be needed to mop it all up. But there is so much more here; Swisher takes a hard look at both current and future technology and how its impact on global society has escaped the hands of those who designed it and is certainly beyond the reach of those in power who (mostly don't) regulate it. Having studied propaganda in college, she is particularly wary about the ramifications of social media as it continues to eat the news. And while Swisher's story of her own rise sometimes feels like background, there are important lessons here for women looking for guideposts as they make their own way. Bawdy, brash, and compulsively thought-provoking, just like its author, Burn Book sizzles.
